M & F may not be the best choice for someone who has no previous experience with Latin, as it was designed for an intensive Latin course and it's, well, intense, and expects you to be able to master the material quickly and move on. D'Ooge and Wheelock move a little more slowly, I think. Haven't used either of them so can't say more than that, I'm afraid.

I haven't used M&F, but D'Ooge & Wheelock are very similar to each other. D'Ooge is obviously older (it's now in the public domain), and if you like the idea of working off of a scanned pdf (especially the fact that it's free) then I'd go that way. If you are the kind of person who likes a book that you can hold and flip through, then you should buy Wheelock. It's also a little more modern in its layout, etc, and there are tons of things on the web (exercises, etc) related to it because it is used by lots of 1st-year college courses. There are also supplemental books (38 Latin stories, workbook, and others) that you can buy to go along with Wheelock.

I am a total Newbie and cannot comment on any of these books in depth.

That said, I just wanted to add that D'Ooge *is* in print and you can get a copyoff Amazon. Just search for "D'Ooge" and it should come up. It is a reprint byKessinger Books and is basically a scan of another, older copy (Havard Lib.,I think).

I really like D'Ooge but not having only a .pdf to work with. I started out brieflywith Super Review Publisher's, "Elements of Latin" which is also by D'Ooge and a $8.00 U.S. book but then realized it lacked the Answer Key. Eight bucks out, but no big deal. When I stumbled on the reprint I bought it even though it is a ridiculously pricey scanned reprint of a public domain text that is over 85 years old ! But, like you,I wanted something to hold in my hand. Plus, this site offers the Answer Key.

The best advice I could give you as a Newbie is to continue to belong to this site.There is no doubt it is your best resource. The Site-Gurus are patient and helpful.It's very helpful to scroll over older posts as they often have links to other good sitesand may have already answered your questions in another thread.

Hope you didn't throw away your copy of D'Ooge's Elements of Latin. I found the Key about 3 years ago and tried in vain to get Textkit to include it in their collection. No response from the gods that be. So for your sake and the sake of anyone else interested I've now uploaded the pdf file here:

NOTE: First you must type in 4 wobbly letters in a box at top right where it says 'download file'. Then the screen changes and you have to wait 40 seconds or so before you can start downloading. Irritating ads might appear sometimes. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the second screen, where eventually the "Please wait..." button changes to "Download Your File Here".

Interaxus,That is a very nice addition, thank you. For anyone only casually reading the thread, note that the answer key is for a different D'Ooge book than the one hosted at textkit (that book is D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners). The D'Ooge book for which Interaxus has supplied a key can be obtained from Google books and/or the internet archive:

These appear to be five unique scans of the same edition. In fact, the second one from Google and the one from the archive appear to be scans of the exact same copy of the book, though the first clearly says scanned by Google and the second says by Microsoft.

This post by Interaxus is the first mention of a digitized key for this text that I have seen.

I had read ("somewhere on-line" - so much for that provenance ) that both D'Ooge books never had Keysto begin with as it was the job of the Teacher to work out solutions to exercises with His/Her pupils in class.Yet your scan was obviously once a published product.

I mentioned in another post that I wrote to the current publishers, "Super Review" and they said they had no Key.That person was Diane Goldschmidt the Senior Editor. She can be reached here: dgoldschmidt@rea.com .Maybe you could work a deal ? Whatever. Who knows?

It is very similar to "Latin for Beginners" but there are differences including different advanced reading matter althoughthat is far beyond my meager abilities as of yet. Also, you can get a PB copy at Border's for $8.00 U.S. so those wholike having paper copies in hand now have another learning option. Much cheaper than the Kessinger Reprints of LfB.